


The Birds and the Snakes

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Warlock Dowling's Not Entirely Normal Life [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, South Downs Cottage, Thaddeus Dowling is a git, Thaddeus Dowling is entirely offscreen but he still manages to be a git from there, Warlock Dowling is not straight, Warlock's upbringing has messed him up, or perhaps closer to internalized homophobic information, sexuality realization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23352748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Warlock Dowling discovers something that could ruin his life.  Naturally, he calls on his godparents.  The help that they give him isn't the help that he's expecting.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Warlock Dowling's Not Entirely Normal Life [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1461898
Comments: 67
Kudos: 403





	The Birds and the Snakes

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Птички и змейки (The Birds and the Snakes)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25149967) by [Gewi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gewi/pseuds/Gewi)



> This fic was beta-read by [chewb,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewb) who was absolutely invaluable.
> 
> This fic contains a sympathetic character who has absorbed extensive anti-gay rhetoric from his family and school. While this situation is eventually resolved, or as resolved as it can be in one fairly short story, you should keep yourself safe if that sort of thing is likely to cause you problems.

Warlock hid inside a boxwood hedge at the back of his dorm and checked to make sure no windows were open nearby before he made the call. It was spring, and night time, and a bit chilly, but a lot of the older boys liked chilly and wore shorts even when there was frost on the ground. When he had assured himself that nobody was listening, he took out his iPhone and dialed.

It didn’t go to voicemail. Thank—someone. “Warlock? What time is it there, anyway? Because it’s three thirty in the—” There was a distinct feeling that a colorful adjective had been consigned to the rubbish bin. “Morning.”

“Nanny,” Warlock said, and heard his voice quaver.

The voice on the other end of the phone changed instantly. _“_ What’s wrong _?”_

“I think—” Warlock looked around again for listeners. “I think I’m gay,” he said tragically.

There was a short silence. Then, “That’s it?”

“You don’t understand, I think I really am  _ gay.” _

“You’re not very observant, is what you are.”

“But what am I going to  _ do? _ If my dad finds out, he’ll kill me! If any of the guys find out, they’ll think I’m after them and they’ll kill me! I won’t be able to walk into a locker room or share a room with someone without them thinking I want to do them, and they’ll be disgusted! I’ll never have a family! The only sex I’ll ever have is gross stuff with gross complications, and I won’t even be able to have  _ that _ after I get the complications! Everyone is going to hate me! I’ll have to go on pretending, ‘Oh, hurr hurr, I’d do her,’ and I don’t  _ want _ that, but if I don’t, everyone is going to seriously no joke hate me and I don’t know what to—”

The scene changed.

Warlock was already starting to wail,  _ “—do!” _ and it choked off in his throat as he realized he was somewhere else. He looked around.

_ Somewhere else _ was lit in a warm, yellow light by Tiffany lamps, and there were books on the walls, floor to ceiling. There was a couch and several comfortable sitting chairs and one of those things that had fake planets that would rotate around a big bronze ball of a sun. Aziraphale, who was wearing glasses, looked up from his book and said, “Was that really necessary, d—Warlock? Whatever is wrong? You look positively dreadful. And you have leaves in your hair.”

Crowley’s phone made a  _ dropped call _ beep. He buttoned it off. “Warlock,” he said, “has figured out that he’s gay and is in crisis because now he’ll never have a family or be happy.”

There was something—not exactly  _ mocking _ in his tone, but heavily ironic. “What,” Warlock stuttered, turning in place. “Where—am I in  _ England? _ Without my passport? Without Dad’s permission? What about school on Monday?”

“We’ll work it out,” Aziraphale said soothingly. “But Crowley is right, you ought to stay here until you get everything settled in your mind. I promise that we’ll sort out your problems, whatever they may be. How late is it in America right now?”

“Um,” Warlock said, and looked down at his phone—which, naturally, had adjusted to the local network and was showing local time. “‘Bout eleven?” he hazarded.

“Why don’t you get to bed?” Aziraphale offered. “Crowley, why don’t you show him the guest bedroom? You can work all this out in the morning.”

Crowley stood up, which, as usual, was a motion that seemed to involve more vertebrae than most people found strictly necessary. “Good idea. Come on, Warlock.”

“I’m going to be jet lagged,” Warlock warned. He had spent enough vacations in Paris and such to be aware that jet lag hit him hard, and usually ruined most of the benefit of seeing the museums or whatever his mother got into her head that he ought to do. He was of the opinion that the Eiffel Tower was overrated and not a good way to learn you were afraid of heights, but it was fun to feed the ducks underneath it.

“Not if I decide you won’t be,” Crowley told him.

Warlock nodded. “Is bringing people to you easier than going to where the people are?” He had never really thought about the mechanics of Crowley’s powers—he tended to assume that Crowley and Aziraphale could do whatever they wanted—but he had half-hoped that Crowley would come to  _ him. _ Being transported to England hadn’t occurred to him.

“Yes, but mostly I wanted to show you something,” Crowley said. “Here. Pajamas should be in the bottom drawer.”

The guest room had the same warm, welcoming air as wherever they’d been before. The lamps were still Tiffany, and Warlock thought it seemed wildly off-brand for Crowley. This must be Aziraphale’s house, then. The quilt on the bed was a rainbow of slightly muted colors. Warlock wondered if it was an antique.

Warlock sat down on the edge of the bed. “Nanny . . .” He was aware that his voice was very small.

“Ground rule,” Crowley said. “Don’t touch any of the books in the library without permission. That’s where all the delicate ones are, and some of them need special handling. If I think of any others, I’ll let you know in the morning.”

“You’re acting like it’s all going to be okay,” Warlock said, “but it  _ isn’t.” _

Crowley paused for a moment. “Second ground rule, then. Think about what you’re seeing. Go to sleep, Warlock. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

§

When Warlock woke up, the sun was coming in the window as if it were mid-morning. He had a moment of confusion about why the sun was coming in his window at all, considering that his window faced north, and then realized that he was in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, and  _ oh. _ Last night.

At least he was here.

He looked in the drawer above where he had found the pajamas, and found clothes, including black trousers and a black sweater. Crowley must have conjured them, he decided. The pajamas had yellow ducks all over them and were very much something Aziraphale might have thought of, but dark clothes were a Crowley thing—and a Warlock thing, so he put them on.

Voices led him to the kitchen. Crowley was lounging against the counters. Aziraphale beamed at Warlock and broke some eggs into a pan. Warlock was quiet for a while, listening to them talk. It was all about people he didn’t know.

“I guess maybe I should go on pretending I don’t like anybody,” Warlock said abruptly, just as Aziraphale flipped the omelet.

“You could do that,” Aziraphale allowed cautiously. “Certainly there are humans who get on quite well without attraction.”

“The only thing is, you’re not  _ supposed _ to not want anybody, you’re supposed to want  _ girls. _ Hunter made a secret board where you can rate the girls on campus. It goes up to ten, and ever since Georgia Ackerley enrolled, it goes down to negative six. Which is awful. I mean, I’ve  _ talked _ to Georgia. She’s a chess champion. And it’s not just chess, it’s understanding games in general. She helped me build my Deux Ascendant deck last year when everyone thought it was going to be a big collectible card game hit. And, I mean, it turns out I was never  _ that _ interested in Deux Ascendant and everyone got bored of it in about a month anyway, but there’s more  _ there _ than her being three hundred pounds and it’s not fair. And you’re supposed to want to score a seven or up, and a lot of the boys even keep track of it to make sure the girl they’re going after is still a seven or up, and I hate it.  _ Hate. It.” _

“The first thing you need to do,” Crowley said, coming over to the table and sprawling into one of the chairs, “is avoid this Hunter."

“He’s the most popular boy in my class.”

“He’s ripe for the picking, is what he is. I know the type. Add a little frustration, stir in just enough adversity to threaten his spot at the center of the universe, while reinforcing his feeling that he belongs there. A demon who knew what they were doing could have him murdering people in weeks.”

Sometimes it was a nasty jolt to remember that Crowley had probably done awful things at one point or another.

“I would imagine that the reason Hunter and his coterie are afraid of gay people,” Aziraphale mused, “is that they wouldn’t appreciate being rated numerically. Although I’m not sure what they’re worried about. As I understand it, the  _ high _ numbers are the ones who come in for unwanted attention.”

“Catty,” Crowley said.

Every other man Warlock knew would have objected strongly to that description. The expression Aziraphale made fell just short of being a smirk. “You enjoy it when I’m catty.”

Crowley smiled. Warlock was unable to decode that smile—part fond, part something else. There was something he wasn’t getting.

As the day went on, Warlock was nagged by that same feeling. There was something he wasn’t getting.

He discovered that Crowley (a) owned a beautiful car, and (b) had never done maintenance or even opened the hood. Warlock was unwilling to push the matter and find out what actually  _ was _ under the hood in case it broke the spell somehow. He half expected a glowing singularity.

He discovered that the house—Crowley called it a cottage, even though it was large—was near the beach, which would have been a lot more interesting if it hadn’t been more chilly here than at school. Or maybe not. What would going to the beach be like, if Warlock was attracted to men?

He learned that the cottage belonged to both Crowley and Aziraphale. Warlock still thought that most of it  _ looked _ like Aziraphale. Although when it came right down to it, he was unsure what a living space for Crowley would look like. Back when he had been a live-in nanny, her room had been almost impossibly austere.

Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t seem in a hurry to bring up the subject of gayness. They waited for Warlock to do it, which frustrated him. Bring him here to help, and then not help—what was that about? “It’s just,” Warlock finally said, at lunch, “last night was classic movie night, right? In Hunter’s room. He always does a theme, like surfing, or stop motion, or whatever, and last night’s theme was puppets.”

“So?” said Crowley.

“So, after we watched the original  _ Dark Crystal, _ he put in this thing with a girl and some old rock star.”

“Ahh.”

“And, I mean, the puppets were pretty cool. When you think about what it would take to do all that without CGI. And Hunter and the boys kept making fun of the plot, but I didn’t really notice, because I was too distracted by the rock star.” He looked down at his sandwich. “And his trousers.” That came out in a miserable mutter.

“You and a generation of impressionable youth,” Crowley said. “So you have a crush on David Bowie. So what? It’ll pass.”

“It won’t  _ pass. _ You don’t get gay and then get un-gay. I mean, some people say that there’s therapy, but—”

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said, in a tone Warlock hadn’t heard from him before, “there’s ‘therapy.’”

Warlock looked up quickly.  _ Aziraphale _ and  _ icy _ were not two concepts that went together very well. He felt like he should take several long steps back.

“I lived in Soho. I knew runaways. I knew more people who were rejected by their families than people who still associated with them. And I have seen people absolutely broken by what their families put them through. I know what has been done in the name of therapy.”

Warlock had a number of questions, starting with  _ what’s a soho, _ but the most important thing was— “That’s basically what I’m saying. There’s no cure. Anyone who tries to get cured, with counseling or military school or whatever, they end up worse off.”

“Your father won’t try anything like that,” Aziraphale said.

“He probably would though.”

“What Aziraphale means to say,” Crowley said, “is that if your father tries to send you to conversion therapy, he’ll answer to us. Both of us. He  _ really _ wouldn’t like that.”

“Oh,” Warlock said, and tried to figure out how he felt about that. They were talking about threatening his father, after all. His father, who he should feel loyal to, or protective of, or  _ something. _ He should feel more than— “That helps, but it doesn’t  _ help _ help. I mean, it doesn’t fix this.”

“You’re still not paying attention,” Crowley told him.

“To  _ what?” _

Crowley just gave him a smirk.

The afternoon went on. Crowley showed Warlock his greenhouse. “Could you make me straight?” Warlock asked Crowley suddenly, looking at the trays of seedlings.

“Think about what you’re asking for, Warlock. You’re asking me to change a part of you, to rip it out and replace it with something that isn’t natural. Do you really want that?”

“It would make me normal,” Warlock said.

“It would change who you are.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s a good thing.”

“Is it?” Crowley prowled around him. “Where do you draw the line? When does it become a case of murdering Warlock Dowling and replacing him with another boy who just looks alike?”

“It’s just one change,” Warlock protested.

“One change. One change which affects your entire life. Who you love. Who you can befriend. How many questions you have to ask about the world you live in. Do you have any idea how much a few questions can change your destiny?” There was an intensity to that question that Warlock didn’t know how to interpret. “No. What you’re asking for goes down to the core of you.” He leaned forward, voice low and dangerous. “Do you really want that?”

Warlock swallowed. “I don’t know. I think so?”

Crowley drew back, looking disappointed. “Too bad. I can’t do it.”

Warlock blinked. “Wait, you  _ can’t _ do it?” He wasn’t used to thinking that Nanny  _ couldn’t _ do things.

“It’s human souls, Warlock. I can affect someone’s mind, but changing a soul? If demons and angels could do that, they’d just warp humanity into whatever they wanted, and forget free will. Heaven and Hell don’t hold back from that because they have  _ scruples.” _

§

After supper, Warlock got tired of the vague feeling of missing something and the growing impression that nothing useful was happening. He took a walk.

He walked for a while, up to where he could see the ocean in the twilight, shoving his hands into his jacket to counteract the cold. He sat on a rock for a little while, letting his problems settle around him like a fog. 

How long was he going to go on like this? Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t seem like they were going to help him at all. He had gone to them for help, and they hadn’t listened.

Maybe they couldn’t do anything.

Maybe he should just ask to go back to the states, and deal with this alone.

A few cold drops of rain came down on him, so he walked back to the cottage. He wasn’t soaked by the time he made it to the door, but he was distinctly damp. It didn’t help his mood.

He could hear Aziraphale’s voice, animated and going on at length, coming from the library. Warlock took off his jacket and went in that direction, pushing back his wet hair. He should just ask to go. Thank them for their hospitality and leave. He could pretend. He could live without affection—however much affection gay people even got. He could—

The library door was open. He started to enter, and then stopped on the threshold.

Aziraphale was sitting on the couch, in one corner of it. He had a book floating in mid-air in front of him, at perfect reading height. The book was  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel, _ which Warlock had vaguely heard of but never read. Aziraphale was wearing glasses again.

Crowley was stretched out full-length on the rest of the couch, and his head was in Aziraphale’s lap. He had his sunglasses off and his eyes were closed. He held Aziraphale’s left hand with his own, and Aziraphale’s right hand was in his hair, stroking gently. Crowley had the softest smile Warlock had ever seen on him.

A large number of things realigned themselves in Warlock’s head.

“When were you going to tell me?” he demanded.

The book shut itself and drifted across the room to an empty spot on the bookshelf. “Come on in and sit down,” Aziraphale said.

“No, but  _ when were you going to tell me? _ You were just, just letting me go on, probably making all sorts of mistakes, wrecking my—my chances here, making you hate me—”

“Never!” Aziraphale said, shocked. “Warlock—”

“I mean, I’ve been  _ scared, _ I’ve been so scared, and it’s not just what people like Hunter will think, it’s the idea of being isolated, of dying alone because of complications so gross that nobody would want to touch me or be near me—”

Crowley stood up. “Warlock.”

“—and all the partners they say a gay man has, you know it’s too many to actually care, it’s just sex, and that’s the way I was thinking of it, like it’s  _ just sex, _ like I wouldn’t be able to tell someone about my day or send silly pictures on Instagram, only  _ you knew _ that it wasn’t that way at all—”

“Warlock . . .”

“—you knew it could be close, and sweet, and peaceful, and just holding hands, and  _ I want that, _ you have no idea how much I want that, it could burn a hole in me how much I want that, and I was terrified that I was never going to get that and  _ you knew _ it was possible and  _ you didn’t tell me!” _

_ “Warlock,”  _ Crowley said.

Warlock looked into his Nanny’s eyes—without the glasses, he had never seen Nanny without glasses—and said,  _ “Oh.” _

And then wished he could take it back, as he saw the emotional armor slam down like blast doors. Crowley flicked the earpieces of his sunglasses out—he was suddenly holding sunglasses, Warlock hadn’t even seen that happen—and Warlock would have wrestled a dragon to get rid of the stony, closed-in look on Crowley’s face. “No,” he fumbled, “no, it’s okay—it’s not even that it’s  _ okay _ okay, it’s cool, really cool, I was just—I just figured out you could see in the dark. That’s all.”

Crowley snorted, and the armor didn’t all go away again, but he vanished the glasses. “What sort of demon would I be if I couldn’t see in the dark?”

“No, but, do you have a tapet—tap-a-something lucid—”

“Tapetum lucidum, and no, I don’t. I’m not a cat. I’m a snake. Demons can see in the dark whatever species we favor.” His voice softened. “Warlock.” He looked as if he wasn’t sure what to say, and then fell back on a phrase that Warlock hadn’t heard since Crowley’s Nanny days. “Do you need a hug, child?” There was a trace of Scottish in it.

“Nanny, I’m  _ fifteen. _ I’m not a baby anymore, I’m—yes. Yes, I need a hug.”

Crowley wrapped his arms around Warlock. He was as angular and bony as he’d ever been. Warlock made a tiny, distressed noise and fought the feeling that tears would leak out at any moment.

“Shh. Sh. You’re all right, Warlock. It’s all right.”

Memories. Or, not so much memories as the  _ feeling _ of memories, the feeling of comfort. For Warlock, feelings of comfort came with a peculiar amount of hellfire and damnation, but it was comfort nonetheless. For some reason, the  _ safe _ feeling of the hug made his eyes water more. “I can’t—I don’t want to—”

“What do we say about tears, Warlock?” Definitely more than a trace of Scottish in that.

Warlock grinned despite his leaking eyes. “If anyone tells you that tears are unmanly, bite their nose off. They won’t say as many stupid things then. Or at least, no-one will understand them without a nose.”

“Exactly right.” Crowley backed off from the hug, took a handkerchief from Aziraphale, who had come up behind him looking concerned, and passed it to Warlock.

Warlock dabbed his eyes and sniffled. Then he looked at the handkerchief.

“What is it?” said Aziraphale.

“It’s just, it’s got lace. I’ve never met a man who would touch lace. Don’t you worry that people might—” He faltered.

“Call me a great pansy?”

“Um. Well . . .”

“I  _ am _ a great pansy. Sit down, Warlock. You have questions; you deserve some answers.”

Warlock sat down in the armchair. “Some of them,” he admitted, “I don’t think I can ask you.” Most of the things about sex. He would rather talk to his mother about sex.

“Why don’t we start with ‘why didn’t we tell you?’” Aziraphale suggested, and sat back down on the couch. Crowley settled in beside him.

“Yeah,” Warlock said. “Yeah, that’s—yeah.”

“Mostly,” Crowley said, “because  _ telling _ you wouldn’t be as good as you seeing for yourself. It’s like a temptation, almost. You don’t get someone to rob a bank by going up to them and saying, ‘Right, there’s money in there, why not take some?’ You lead them there. Carefully. Showing them where necessary.”

“Showing them how to rob a bank?”

“Showing them the things they could  _ get _ if they robbed a bank. It’s not a precise analogy.”

It had its points, Warlock thought. Somewhere between the door of the library and the armchair, his entire sense of being attracted to things had re-aligned. Instead of muttering,  _ something something David Bowie, _ it was now screaming,  _ find someone who will stroke your hair. In a library. While the rain patters on the window and makes white noise against the roof. That, precisely that feeling, is what I want. Go out and find it. _ If he could have gotten that by robbing a bank, Warlock wouldn’t even have waited for the getaway car.

“I wasn’t entirely convinced,” Aziraphale admitted. “But I have spent long hours, and I do mean  _ hours, _ arguing with runaways and rentboys and the various children who fall through the cracks, trying to convince them that their lives are not over because they’re gay. Or bisexual, or trans. I haven’t always succeeded. On a few occasions, I’ve failed spectacularly. I’ve never been quite certain what combination of words works, and what doesn’t work, and more depressingly whether it actually has anything to do with  _ me _ at all, and so I thought—” He gave Crowley a fond look. “Why not be wily?”

Crowley’s lips quirked, and Warlock revised  _ fond _ to  _ besotted. _ And it wasn’t that they were looking at each other any differently than they had all afternoon. It was just that Warlock was seeing it now, because he knew it was possible.

Crowley was right. He needed to become more observant. “Was this in Soho?” Warlock asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s Soho?”

“London’s premiere gay district. Also, for much of its history, rather high in crime, the sort of place where desperate people fetch up. It’s gone more upscale now. I left several years ago, but I’ve kept most of my ties with the community there. I’ve even been called back to help, a few times. There are a few people who know I’m—not entirely ordinary.”

“Because,” Crowley said, “he’s never bothered to fake being his own son, and he spent the eighties trying to keep the community from collapsing, and he’s been going to the same barber shop for over a hundred years. Despite not actually needing haircuts.”

“Really, my love, who would believe that  _ I _ had a son?”

“What happened in the eighties?” Warlock asked.

Both were silent for a beat. “AIDS crisis,” Crowley said shortly.

“It was dreadful,” Aziraphale said, in a low voice. “Thatcher and Reagan, you know. Neither one willing to spend a penny on the problem. Hospitals behaving horribly, families refusing their children’s remains, the drag queens performing every night to raise money for the care and the funerals. I had to help, but at the same time, I couldn’t provide anywhere  _ close _ to the help needed, because Gabriel—”

Crowley took Aziraphale's hand and ran his thumb over Aziraphale’s knuckles. “Is an arsehole,” he supplied, when Aziraphale didn’t go on.

“I . . . rather wish I could argue with that.”

Warlock had always had the basic impression, from his father and his education alike, that not only had Reagan been a good president, but that everyone except a few fringe types  _ agreed _ Reagan had been a good president, regardless of their position on several more recent tire fires. But then, he had also absorbed the idea that if there was such a thing as an Archangel Gabriel, one probably wouldn’t describe him as an arsehole.

“How long have you guys been . . .” Warlock trailed off.

“That depends entirely on how you define ‘together,’” Aziraphale said. “Probably since Armageddon. Four and a half years now.”

“The Arrangement lasted for centuries, though,” Crowley added.

“Arrangement?”

“We would streamline our work. I would do some of his temptations, when I was in the area, and he would do some of my blessings, and he would cheat like a fiend on the coin toss whenever he didn’t want to ride a horse.”

“Liar,” Crowley said affectionately. “It was never about the work.”

_ “Some _ of it was about you not wanting to ride horses.” But there was a teasing note in the way he said it.

“So you’ve  _ known _ each other for centuries . . .”

“We’ve  _ known _ each other since the Garden of Eden,” Crowley corrected. “I had a little talk with Eve, Eve had a little encounter with an apple tree, God had a little bit of a  _ massive overreaction, _ and once all the shouting was done, I talked to the angel on the wall.” His smile widened. “Who was supposed to have a flaming sword, so naturally I asked what happened to it.”

“What happened to it?” Warlock said obediently.

“He gave it away. Against divine orders. Because Adam and Eve were  _ cold. _ I don’t think I’d ever encountered anything quite so stupid, or quite so kind, or quite so charming.”

A return of the besotted look, from both of them this time.

“How do you know, though?” Warlock said. “How do you know if it’s all right to ask—I mean, I guess you were a woman before, so maybe it was different—only would you even be interested in him when she was a woman?—but the point is, how do you go up to a friend and ask them if they’re maybe—”

“I was a man before I was Nanny Ashtoreth,” Crowley said. “And a woman. And other things.”

“Strictly speaking, neither of us is  _ exactly _ a man,” Aziraphale said. “We’re angels, one of us Fallen. Gender is . . . well, it’s a more recent invention than we are. ‘Gay’ is the shorthand the humans use given what we look like right now. ‘Queer’ is closer. LGBT+ works, so long as it’s plainly understood that there ought to be plenty of room in the  _ plus. _ And I wouldn’t advise doing things our way. We spent centuries  _ terrified _ of the consequences of associating with each other, and doing it anyway, and it took the end of the world, the threat of complete annihilation, and several very nasty arguments—not necessarily in that order—before we could live freely as ourselves.”

“We can’t make a relationship happen for you,” Crowley said, “and we wouldn’t if we could. What we can help with are the other things. Need a different school? Simple. Need your father to sit down and shut up? Thaddeus is enough of a hard case that I’m not sure we can make him  _ accept _ you being queer, but we can definitely make sure he leaves you alone about it. It comes down to what you want. And I don’t think you’ve completely decided yet. Not for the short term.”

It was true. Warlock could picture the gentle, comfortable relationship he wanted when he was grown—that was as easy as picturing two people on a couch—but the immediate future?  _ That _ was a mystery. “You’re probably right that I should stay away from Hunter, anyway,” Warlock admitted. Hang out more with the theater kids—the rest of the theater kids. He was going to have to make a careful distinction between real friends and people who made gay jokes. “I don’t think—right now, I don’t think I want much to change. I’ve got figuring out to do, and it might be best just to do that—quietly.”

“Whatever you need,” Aziraphale said sincerely.

“And I need to figure out how to get better—gaydar, I guess.”

Crowley snorted.  _ “Definitely.” _

§

In the end, the worst thing about the weekend was the flight back. Aziraphale and Crowley were both hesitant about just transporting Warlock back to his dorm. They hadn’t been there enough, they explained, and aiming could be tricky. So Warlock had to go through Heathrow, which was predictably a nightmare.

At least he got to watch the sunset take what seemed like hours as the airplane chased it across the Atlantic. And he had Crowley’s guarantee that the time change wouldn’t affect him going this way either. Although it was never quite as rough, for Warlock at least, going west.

Gay. He was gay. And it wasn’t a disaster.

It was going to be an  _ adjustment, _ definitely. But somewhere in his future, there could be someone who would stroke his hair and look at him with that soft, gentle expression.

And in the meantime—

In the meantime, he needed to find out how much of what he had been told was completely wrong. The thing about medical complications, for example. Or the thing about how many partners gay men went through—well, he already sort of knew that wasn’t going to apply to him, because it wasn’t what he wanted.

He needed information.

_ They say that Scarleteen is solid, _ Crowley had told him.  _ I wouldn’t know. No conspiracy theorists to provoke, so I stay away from it. _

Well, it was a place to start. Warlock got out his phone.

**Author's Note:**

> While I am too old to have gotten my young adult information from it, [scarleteen](www.scarleteen.com) is, as the story says, a solid resource. You can track down all sorts of useful information there, from "basics of consent" to "what is a prostate and what could I potentially do with it." Chewb also pointed me towards [everyoneisgay](www.everyoneisgay.com) which is geared even more towards LGBT+ youth, and contains lots of advice-column style questions and answers concerning everything from coming out to college roommates.
> 
> If you are in a situation like Warlock's— _especially_ if you are in a situation where you can't get good information and/or your parents aren't supportive—you might want to go have a look at these resources. It's also worthwhile to remember that other people have been where you are now and have come out happy and healthy. Say safe, say strong, and remember that there are people on your side.
> 
> P.S. For those who aren't familiar with classic movies, the movie that Warlock saw was _Labyrinth._ A lot of kids in my generation had their sexual awakening to David Bowie in _Labyrinth;_ the movie is somewhat notorious for it, actually. If anything, Warlock undersold the puppet-work, which is _excellent,_ but then, he was somewhat distracted.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Birds And The Snakes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680057) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




End file.
